How to Airbrush Chrome Letters
- 1). Place a sheet of frisket film over the computer printout of the word or phrase you want to airbrush. Use a marker to trace the letters onto the frisket film.
- 2). With your X-Acto knife, lightly cut around the words stenciled on the frisket film to expose the interior of each letter. Make sure to keep the middle pieces where applicable, such as the centers of a "B" or an "O".
- 3). Place the frisket film, and any of the middle pieces, on the illustration board. Position them as you would like to paint them and tape them down securely.
- 4). Put the black paint in your airbrush. Using your straight edge, lightly paint thin outline around each of the letters and any middle pieces. Although these will be the darkest parts of the letters, keep the color very faint at this point. You can easily darken the color later on, but it is much more difficult to lighten it.
- 5). Still using black paint, draw a horizontal "horizon line" across each of the letters. Place the line about halfway between the top and bottom of the letter, leaving a little white space before you reach the outline at each edge. The line should be fairly dark, but not perfectly straight.
- 6). Slowly fill in the area below the horizon line in each letter with black paint. Make the color darkest right at the line, then gradually lighter as you progress down the letter, until it fades to white at the bottom. Keep the shading centered in the middle of each letter, leaving a little white space at each edge.
- 7). Clean the black paint from your airbrush, and load it with blue paint.
- 8). Slowly fill in the area above the horizon line with blue paint. The color should be darkest near the top of each letter, and gradually fade to white before it hits the horizon line. Similar to the black shading, keep the color in the center of the letter and leave a little white space around the edges.
- 9). Survey your work to see if any areas need to be darkened or lightened. To make areas darker, gradually layer more paint until you reach the desired color. To make areas lighter, use your airbrush eraser.
- 10
Allow the paint to dry for about 5 minutes. - 11
Slowly remove the frisket film to reveal your finished painting.
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